Here's something I've noticed in newspapers for which I find no clear-cut rule.

There seem to be two ways of approaching what follows a colon, and that is to capitalise or not to capitalise. Which is it?

I've seen people do this: They capitalise the first letter following the mark. I've seen others who do it such: they don't. My own leaning is towards the latter, as I was always taught that the colon provides for a continuation of a sentence, rather than helps to begin a new one. Does anyone know of any MLA ruling or any such King's English grammatical rule that would shed light on this?

the rule is simple: If the material following the colon is a complete sentence, it begins with a capital letter.

The Swedish rules are a bit more wordy, but in essence the same: If what follows is a direct quote or quotation, or an exhortation, exclamation or a question, or when more than one sentence follows, use a capital.

But if that were Swedish, I would have used lower case ': if' ("explanation, summary or the like"). Then, the 'complete sentence' rule loses.

lazuliangel wrote:Here's something I've noticed in newspapers for which I find no clear-cut rule.

There seem to be two ways of approaching what follows a colon, and that is to capitalise or not to capitalise. Which is it?

The copy-editor for a book I've just completed (for W. W. Norton, New York) imposed this rule that if what follows the colon is a complete sentence, it should begin with a capital. I had never heard of this before, no British copy-editor in my experience has adopted it, and I have never yet seen the rule applied in a printed book. It must be very new.

I didn't quibble -- there are more important things to worry about -- but, yes, I'd like to know who first had the idea and why.

I naturally tend to capitalize the word following the colon, but recall ALWAYS having it corrected while in college. For this reason I now always follow the colon with a lower-case letter.
Never heard of the complete sentence rule.

"If the material introduced by a colon consists of more than one sentence, or is a formal statement, a quotation, or a speech in dialogue, it should begin with a capital letter. Otherwise it may begin with a lower case letter."

Note there is an unexpected amount of flexibility here:
SHOULD begin and MAY begin. The former suggests a capital letter is not compulsory while the latter suggests that a capital letter would be equally acceptable.

For those seeking simple rules, I would suggest always using a capital letter to take advantage of the flexibility of the latter while satisfying the strongly urged recommendation of the former.